


How Do You Smile?

by TheDoctorAndRiversArmyOfPeppers



Category: Doctor Who
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-12
Updated: 2015-12-12
Packaged: 2018-05-06 08:27:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 568
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5409950
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheDoctorAndRiversArmyOfPeppers/pseuds/TheDoctorAndRiversArmyOfPeppers
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Doctor noticed his thumbs becoming wet. It took him a moment to realize it was because River was crying.</p>
            </blockquote>





	How Do You Smile?

River watched her husband descend the stairs from the control platform in the TARDIS. She'd recently discovered that he'd regenerated and she was very pleased with his new appearance. But now, after smiling and laughing for much of the day, the Doctor seemed sad.

It was an innocent enough question, and very much warranted given the circumstances. Or so she thought. But it had made the Doctor go all dark and removed.

All River wanted to know was how long he'd been without her. But when she asked, his face fell and his eyes looked right past her, haunted and distant. This was the Doctor broken.

He was standing at the bottom of the stairs with his back to her now. River was worried about him.

"Sweetie? How long has it been?" She asked again, more wary this time.

"Just a wee bit over a thousand years," the Doctor said quietly.

"One thousand years," she repeated, aghast.

"Plus the time I spent in my confession dial."

"What were you doing in there?" River was surprised.

The Doctor visibly stiffened and gripped the stair rail so tightly his knuckles went white.

"You don't want to know," he told her.

"Yes I do," she said firmly before bounding down the stairs after him. "Tell me."

"It's not good, River," he turned to face her.

The sudden wave of emotions in his eyes were enough to make River take a step back out of surprise.

"Tell me anyway."

"River, I..."

"Shut up, sweetie," she interrupted him. "What sort of wife would I be if I couldn't help you?"

"Are you sure about this?" He looked as if he were debating something important in his head.

"Yes."

He nodded sadly and put his hands on either side of her head. She spent the next few minutes watching his memories through a telepathic link. She watched the little he could remember of Clara dying and she watched the Doctor brake through the harder-than-diamond wall. And she felt everything he had felt. She felt his fear, his pain, his loneliness, his anger.

The Doctor noticed his thumbs becoming wet. It took him a moment to realize it was because River was crying.

Once she'd finished in his head, she pulled back and looked him in the eyes.

"Four and a half billion years?" There was a mixture of horror, anger, despair and pride in her face and voice.

"Yes," the Doctor said cautiously, not sure what any of his wife's emotions meant.

"How do you smile?" River pulled her husband into a hug. "After all that, how could you possibly ever smile?"

The Doctor unwrapped himself from River's arms and put his fingers to her temples again. This time, instead of letting her roam around his head freely, he brought forward a particular memory for her to see.

It started with him being grumpy and sad in the TARDIS and ended whith him standing outside another spaceship in the snow. A woman in a red, Christmassy cloak walked over to him and pulled her hood from her head.

Inside the Doctor's mind, River felt his pain and misery fade away to be replaced with excitement and pure joy. Never-ending joy at just the sight of this woman in a red cloak.

The Doctor severed the telepathic connection and moved his hands to cup her cheeks.

"I smile because of you," he told her softly.


End file.
